Sunday, September 27, 2009

Why I Wasn't Painting - Excuse #1

Why I Wasn't Painting - Excuse #1 - My studio was a mess.

What happens when you want to do art, but you just can't get going? I've been at that place for a few months now. There seemed to be barriers between me and making art - painting, in particular. So I spent a fair bit of time ruminating on the problem and came up with a series of excuses....

The first excuse was that my studio was a mess, stuff piled everywhere, and me having only vague ideas of what was in the piles. How could I paint when there were sure to be things in those piles that I needed to take care of? Solution - I finally cleaned up my studio. I don't have any before pictures - count yourself lucky - but I thought, now that it looks neat, I'd give a tour of my studio here on my blog.So here's the tour. The door from the living room is on the right in the first picture. Working counterclockwise around the room, the first wall on the right has my design wall (from when I was doing lots of art quilts). Yellow Bird, one of my art quilts, is pinned to the design wall. To the left of that are two cork bulletin boards - Bruno, the bear, is on one and Edgar, a Great Egret, is on the other. The containers below hold my stash of fabrics and trims. The bookcase in the corner houses some of my art books. This second picture shows a close-up of that corner.

Stepping back, and turning a bit -

This picture shows some cupboards - the top cupboards are storage, and the bottom ones hold the pump for our well. Included in this shot is my easel, and behind the easel, my worktable. Ed (hubby) built the worktable for me. The top is an old door that measures about 7' x 3-1/2'. There's a platform below for storage. In the far left of the picture, you can see a silver lamp that lights my sewing area.

This picture shows how Ed "built-in" the sewing machine so that there is a level surface for me to use. This really helped when I was quilting my wall hangings! The sewing machine comes out easily if I need to take it somewhere.Stepping back again, and turning more to the left, the worktable (with sewing machine) and easel are on the right of the picture. In the far corner are more storage bins (polymer clay, beads, buttons, molds, stencils, etc.) My apologies for the glare from the windows (I do get good light in here!). Toward the left, there's a card table with a green tablecloth. Almost impossible to see on the table is Casey (my cockatiel) sitting on top of his cage.Here's a close-up of that corner. You might want to take note of the rainbow of spools of sewing thread! Yes, I have a few - but these are only the decorative ones - the spools I sew with are in some drawers. These two art quilts are two of my favorites - the one on the left is "Waiting for the Bus" and the one on the right is named "Bequia." Paints and painting mediums are collected on the narrow shelf.Moving more to the left, (and still difficult to see), is Casey on top of his cage, then my recliner and, above the chair, my art quilt "Marty Macaw." Another bookcase is behind the chair. The door on the left leads out to the driveway. At one time this room, which is 20 x 20 feet, was a two-car garage attached to the house. On the left, you can see the chair that's at my desk. As we rotate once more....

This desk has my computer, printers, and files. Lots of storage above. On the far left, you can just see the door that goes into the living room, where we began this tour.